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U.S. SEEN AS OPEN TO CYBER ATTACK
Cyber Warfare graphic October 8, 1997
Web posted at: 3:46 p.m. EDT (1946 GMT)
BALTIMORE (AP) -- Suddenly, electric power goes off. Or telephones
go dead. There's chaos in the electronic banking system. Are the
incidents electronic accidents, or deliberate attacks?
Computer security experts from government and private industry
voiced agreement Tuesday that as the most technologically advanced
society in the world, the United States is uniquely vulnerable to
electronic attack.
How soon the threat would be real and what could be done to block it
were principal topics of discussion on the opening day of the
National Information Systems Security Conference.
"Our profound vulnerability is growing on a daily basis," said
Charles Abzug of the Institute for Computer and Information
Sciences. "Since our society is the most technologically advanced in
the world, we are more vulnerable than anyone else."
Robert Marsh, a retired Air Force general who is chairman of the
President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, told
the conference that "while a catastrophic cyber attack has not
occurred, we have enough isolated incidents to know that the
potential for disaster is real and the time to act is now."
The commission is expected to send its report to the White House
next week. Marsh said the panel would recommend far greater
cooperation and sharing of information between government and
private industry, accelerated research and a nationwide program to
educate people on the scope of the problem.
But questions were quickly raised as to how much information the
government could share from a report that is classified.
"We have to solve this dilemma because if we don't, we have no
sharing of information," said Thomas J. Falvey, a commission member
who is a security expert at the Transportation Department.
Marsh conceded in an interview that there will be a need to break
down reluctance within industry and government to share sensitive
information.
He said there is a need to "devise the means by which the private
sector can in fact be willing to share its information and not fear
that it will leak."
At the same time, the government "is going to have to recognize that
in this new era, it's the private sector that needs some of this
threat information and this warning information."
As examples of cyber attacks already experienced, Marsh cited
incidents at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and Griffis Air
Force Base in Rome, New York.
"A flood of e-mail messages originating in Australia and Estonia,
and routed through the White House computer system, virtually shut
down Langley air base's e-mail for hours," he said.
Someone in England routing messages through Latvia, Colombia and
Chile and commercial Internet service providers gained access to
computers at Rome Laboratory at Griffis and "launched attacks
against a wide array of defense and government computer systems,"
Marsh said.
One of the difficulties in such cases is determining whether it is
the work of a mischievous hacker or an attack by a hostile
government.
"If Iran attacked AT&T, how does AT&T know that's an act of war
rather than some kid fooling around?" asked John Pescatore, a senior
consultant at Trusted Information Systems, a developer of computer
security software.
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.
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Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
* Air Force Information Warfare Center World-Wide Web - develops,
maintains and deploys Information Warfare/Command and Control
Warfare (IW/C2W) capabilities in support of operations, campaign
planning, acquisition and testing
* Air Force Computer Emergency Response Team - the single point of
contact in the Air Force for reporting and handling computer
security incidents and vulnerabilities
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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